1. Field of the Invention
A connector arrangement connects the flat conductors that extend upwardly from a horizontal photovoltaic cell panel with the insulated conductors of a cable via the circuits of a printed circuit board, respectively. A flat conductor support member is adhesively secured to the upper surface of the horizontal photovoltaic cell panel and includes upwardly extending bridge portions having flat upper edges about which are reversely bent the upper free ends of the flat conductors. A hollow sectional connector housing includes a lower body section containing a bottom opening that receives the flat conductor support member when the lower body section is seated on the panel upper surface. Bifurcated resilient contacts mounted on the lower section have first portions that engage the bent flat conductor ends, respectively, and second portions that engage the circuits on a replaceable printed circuit board carried by the removable upper cover section of the housing.
2. Description of Related Art
Photovoltaic cell systems generally have at least one photovoltaic panel for current generation from sunlight, together with flexible flat conductor ends that extend out of the photovoltaic panels for connection with the insulated conductors of a cable, which makes it possible to connect the photovoltaic panels to a building installation via an inverter arrangement or the like.
Working with the state of the art, the individual flat conductors must be contacted manually by means of individual binding posts or the like. This is why connecting the appliances is relatively laborious and, as a rule, it is necessary to employ specially trained experts for the purpose of connecting the appliances.
Furthermore, there is the problem that installations, constructed in this way, as a rule, are relatively unitary and therefore are very difficult to repair in case of trouble.
As evidenced by the German patents Nos. DE 20 2005 018 884 U1 and DE 203 11 183U1 and the Sotolongo U.S. Pat. No. 4,460,232, it is also known to provide connector housings by means of which the conductor ends are contacted. The Published International Application No. WO2007/118798A2 furthermore discloses a connector device for conductor ends, in particular, flat conductor ends on a photovoltaic panel out of which protrudes a plurality of flat conductor ends, and which has a receiving housing as well as a receiving unit that can be attached to the photovoltaic panel and that, in particular, can be adhesively fastened upon the latter for the purpose of receiving the flat conductor ends upon which the receiving housing can be stuck. The receiving unit is made as a receiving carrier, which has at least one seat or a plurality of seats, especially seat bridges over which each one of the flat conductor ends can be bent, which flat conductor ends in this position can be contacted by bell contacts that in the course of current generation represent the particular current-conducting elements.
Although this type of contacting has generally proved to be effective, it is desirable to simplify handling for maintenance purposes. The present invention was developed to solve this problem.